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breaking news

Sidney Lumet was a hit at Army camp

Legendary film director Sidney Lumet died April 9 at 86. He directed more than 40 films, including 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon and Fail-Safe. But it’s likely that few, if any, of his obituaries mentioned the boffo performance he staged as a 19-year-old in Florida.

From 1942 to 1945, more than 10,000 men moved through the Southern Signal Corps School in southern Martin County. As many as 6,000 were there at one time, giving the place a larger population than nearby Jupiter.

The July 2, 1943, edition of the Camp Murphy Message raved about the original comedy On the Ball, co-written and directed by a GI named Sidney Lumet.

Sidney Lumet in 1956 (Associated Press file photo)

Despite only six weeks in preparation and rehearsal, Lumet’s three-act play, with six original songs, “was a distinct hit and brought down the house,” the Message said. “About 1,000 GI’s jammed the hall, sitting, standing and hanging from the rafters! It was easily the best thing of its kind ever done by Murphy actors.”

The strategic training site was named for Col. William Herbert Murphy, a Signal Corps officer and radio pioneer who died in battle Feb. 3, 1942.

When the military had come to Florida looking for land for installations, the Reed family of Jupiter Island turned over 1,000 acres with the provision the land be restored to its natural state when the Army was done with it.

The Army bought about 17 acres from the pioneer DuBois family for $1,000.

In a winding 9-mile path between U.S. 1 and the railroad tracks, the military threw together more than 1,000 buildings.

Camp Murphy was deactivated in October 1944, although the Air Force and NASA operated there into the 1960s. Most of the property was turned over to the state for the park. The theater became a trash dump, the finance center a garage.

In 1947, a concrete water reservoir was converted into offices; later, it became an emergency operations center for a nation fearing nuclear war. It operated from 1953 to 1985. It is now the park office.

Through the years, the camp’s mess hall, chapel, many of the barracks and even the latrines were sold and became cottages, warehouses and other building scattered across the Treasure Coast.

Army troops train at Camp Murphy, which is now Jonathan Dickinson State Park, in 1944. The camp was a training center for the Signal Corps. Sidney Lumet was a GI there in 1943 and entertained his Army buddies with a three-act comedic play titled On the Ball. The base newsletter featured a piece on it, saying it ‘brought down the house.’ (Palm Beach Post file photo courtesy of U.S. Army Signal Corps)

The Camp Murphy Players present “The Army Day by Day” for a bond drive at the Paramount Theatre in Palm Beach. (Photo courtesy of the Historical Society of Palm Beach County)